Found Objects
In so many shows, a prop on the set is picked up and used as an impromptu weapon. Usually these fights have very few moves; most commonly a single swinging motion that either connects, misses, or is blocked by the victim.
There are two important aspects to keep in mind. First, the aggressor must be in complete control of the prop and how it moves from beginning to end. Go back to the sword section to learn how to swing a prop safely, for the victim must be absolutely safe for every second of every action. If the swing is going to be blocked, the attacker needs to learn how to perform a sword “cut”. If the swing misses, then you are looking for the section of “slashes”. Secondly, the construction standards for that item must be much higher than they are for most props. A prop that can break is also one that can cut an actor.
The term “found objects” is a catch-all phrase which includes items that aren’t normally considered weapons, but that the character is compelled to use in the heat of action. Some of these were mentioned in the earlier section, so I’ll assume that the items you are dealing with have been specifically built for the fight or have been thoroughly checked out and made secure for the safety of the actors. If you have any doubts, don’t use the item.
When dealing with a found object in a fight, first spend some time getting to know the item. Find its strengths and weaknesses, find its center of gravity, learn how it can be safely grasped, how it can be thrust or swung. If it begins to slip from your hand, how is it going to turn or tumble? A stuffed doll seems harmless enough, but loose hair can act as a hundred little whips and could lash at someone’s eyes. A piece of wood or a bar of steel might be plenty strong for itself, but too strong for the weapons it is going against, so moves might have to be modified. Here are some props I’ve encountered. From one thing learn ten thousand.
• Fan – There are some very sturdy steel-ribbed folding fans that can be purchased through most martial arts supply houses, and your costumer might be able to re-cover one or even paint it so as to fit the design of the show. Be sure to get steel-ribbed, and the aluminum ones can’t survive the punishment. Used as a substitute for a dagger in a rapier fight, it adds great visual flair once you get used to snapping it open for key moments and twirling it as an attack or defense. Keep in mind that strong blocks against even a light fencing sword will need to be done with the fan closed.
• Bottle – It has become almost a cliché to have Barrymore use a Champagne bottle in I Hate Hamlet or Athos use a bottle of Bordeaux in The Three Musketeers as a secondary weapon during at least one of his rapier fights. I like using empty Champagne bottles rather than regular wine or even beer bottles, for the sparkling wine containers are thicker and designed to withstand the much greater pressure that the fizzy wines create. But as a precaution, I like pouring in some liquid latex or rubber cement, and turning the bottle as it dries to completely coat the inside. That way, in case the glass does break, the bottle will remain intact with fewer shards flying all over the place.
A bottle works best when the opposing blade is the forgiving and flexible epee blade, and definitely when used primarily as a parrying tool to deflect thrusts, rather than to block cuts. Even if you can have the attacker reduce the power of the cut enough to keep from breaking the glass, your audience will never believe the action. And don’t hold the bottle as you would a serious weapon, but rather grab it by the neck as though you are going to pour yourself a glass. Let the base of the bottle simply hang down and swing your arm from side to side to make the parries. This also leaves your character in position to take a swig out of the bottle during the fight for a small comic bit.
If you are using the bottle as a club, read the section a little further below. If you are using a “broken bottle” prop, go back to the knife section. Same actions, different prop.
• Chair – Cane back chairs are the easiest to use due to the light weight and relatively sturdy construction, but always check the item carefully every day to make sure that the wood isn’t developing stress fractures. You may also need to reinforce all of the joints as well as the seat.
These things have a strange center of gravity, so work out with the chair for several weeks before incorporating it into the choreography. Swing it, toss it, catch it, lift it, push it, pull it – fully explore how the chair moves through space when you hold onto each leg or by the back, with two hands and then with one.
• Hats – Nice comic bits flow naturally when someone’s hat is used in a rapier and dagger fight, but let the costumer and the make-up designer in on your ideas at the very first opportunity. Obviously the costumer is going to have to come up with some sturdy alternatives to what she may have had in mind (she’s just going to love you) but why the make-up designer? Hats sometimes need to be secured to hair or wigs for a good fit, and using it for a fight might affect the hair choices. Talk it out early so there are no tech week surprises.
• Trash can lid – I’ve used it for West Side Story and for modern versions of Shakespeare plays. I know it’s a bit obvious when the curtain rises and you see a trash can on the set that it’s going to find its way into the combat, but it’s just too useful in a fight to not include it. It can be used in two ways – grabbed by the edge or by the center handle. If you’ve been lucky enough to find a steel trash can (they’re becoming an endangered species) you’ll have to do something about the handle.
That handle on a steel lid is usually free floating or pivoting so it can lay down flat when not in use. So if the lid is to be grabbed from the center and used as a shield, you’ll need to replace the grip with a rigid handle, otherwise the shield will be uncontrollable. When you do so, be sure to give yourself a little extra clearance than a normal handle would have so that you don’t bruise your knuckles during the fight. Because of the light weight, the movement choices can be a combination of those for the buckler, the shield, and even the dagger by swinging the lid with the edge as the attacking point.
If you grab the lid by the edge, you are limited to swinging the thing either flat or edgewise, which in a real fight are probably the only instinctual moves. Someone will always want to hit someone on the back with the lid, and there is a safe way to do it, but first get rid of that central handle. If someone gets hit by it, it’s going to hurt mightily. The lid is slightly concave, which is good because it keeps that nasty edge away from the victim. Hold the lid close to your own body and push – not swing – it toward the upstage plane of your partner (assuming he is facing downstage). The lid will swing around of its own accord and make sufficient percussion contact with the victim’s back (or better yet, back and upper arm) to sell the illusion. The main point is not to swing your arms around baseball style; you don’t need to and that makes the move dangerous.
• Club – Here I’m including any non-articulated, blunt, relatively straight object which is usually at least three times as long as it is wide and can be grasped comfortably with one hand, even if used with two. So this would include clubs, flashlights, walking sticks, baseball bats, musical instruments … you get the idea. It also includes bottles grabbed in a much more threatening manner than described above in the bottle section. Read the section about using the broadsword and the entire unarmed section to get a thorough grounding on safe technique. Many of the techniques explained there are applicable to the club. To those we can add a few interesting variations, especially strikes to the head.
There are many ways of doing this, none of which sends any energy whatsoever towards the victim’s head at any time. The requirement is always that the movement of the club travel along a plane safely upstage or downstage of the victim.
The first is the parallel stance strike, which is very similar to the unarmed jab illusion. For the set-up, the actors are parallel to the proscenium with the aggressor facing the victim (the victim can face any direction). The picture is merely the aggressor raising the club to the height appropriate for the damage to be represented, but slightly upstage of the victim. The action is very light and quick, the club quickly lowered then raised to the original position, as quickly as striking a bell. If this illusion is to work, the club must disappear for only an instant behind the victim’s head and then must “bounce” back up into view. Don’t leave the club hanging behind the victim for even a nanosecond or the audience will be able to figure out how you did it. This is just like the jab and groin kick simulations in the unarmed section isn’t it? It works because the audience has no depth perception and cannot follow movement. Be sure to include the appropriate sound of the strike.
A lighter version of the same strike is what I call the “kabong”. The mechanics are the same, but pictures before and after have the weapon held lightly and pointing straight up. This simulation has more of a comedic look, something like a dope-slap, where the intent of the aggressor is not to cause damage.
And then of course there is always the “self-kabong”. Here the tables are turned, after the weapon is raised the victim places his hand on the hand of the aggressor. The aggressor then reverses the direction of the strike, simulating a strike to his own head. Cheap laughs are just as good as intellectual laughs.
A second strike is the fan swing, with the aggressor fully upstage or downstage of the victim. For this bit, the club travels in a sweeping arc along a plane between the two combatants. The club is not swung in any way toward the victim (that’s right, just like the fan kick or the looping face punch simulations). If the club were not in hand, the move would look more as though the aggressor had merely waved to the victim, not swung at him.
One move that we don’t see with other weapons but that we can add here is a block to the fan swing. This would be used if both fighters are armed with some sort of club. As the aggressor brings his fan swing up to vertical, but not yet in front of his own body, the victim jabs his own club between the aggressor and his club. The look and feeling of the move is that of poking a stick into a propellor or spinning bicycle tire, bringing a sudden stop to the movement of the fan swing. From there, many moves are possible, the most common being some sort of bind or press of the aggressors weapon setting up a strike from the victim.
A far more aggressive strike is a variation of the pile driver. In this case the club is raised as high as possible but angled so that it is parallel to the ground. The weapon is brought straight down between the participants, and the swing goes almost all the way down to ground. If you want to add a little more realism to the simulation, let the trajectory of the swing slightly deflect into a different direction (preferably toward the aggressor) after the supposed contact (as though it bounced off the head, right?). Either way, a strike like this would be a fight-ender.
No matter what the strike, we can put the finishing touch by including a contact sound, but this should be done by an off-stage assistant with a couple of blocks of wood. The bit works so well in fact that for one production of Taming of the Shrew we had the musician/sound effects guy completely visible to the house, obviously striking his wood block. Yet they still winced and cried out in commiseration with what they thought they saw. Sound always makes it real.
• Side-Handle Baton – Modern police are well trained in the use of this successor to the old billy club. The addition of the side bar not only adds the possibility of a number of take down and restraining holds, but also converts it from a simple club to a powerful impact weapon.
The side bar baton can either be held by the standard grip and used as a traditional club, or held by the side bar, with the club coming out of the bottom of the fist. In this case the grip is slightly relaxed, allowing the weapon to freely spin in the hand. When the arm is swung side to side, the club swings around at twice that speed, and can easily break someone’s ribs or arms. Actors should never use the club this way unless they are safely out of distance. But they can take advantage of this grip by pressing the baton up against the forearm and using it as a very effective blocking tool. From that same position, it can also be used as a punching and elbow striking tool.
• Cloak, Net – The fisherman’s net was sometimes used in Roman gladiatorial games as a secondary weapon held in the left hand with a trident held in the right. The intent would have been to snag the opponent’s weapon or helmet and then run him through with the trident. For stage, most of the moves are going to be big sweeps that are evaded by the victim and smaller circular sweeps used as defense against thrusts. Keep the moves simple and few, for the actor always runs the risk of tangling himself with his own net.
Cloaks were sometimes used as defensive tools in rapier fights, and are good replacements for using the dagger in a staged rapier and dagger fight. Usually, the bottom of the clock will need to be slightly weighted so that the fabric doesn’t float too long between moves. Just as with hats, talk to the costumer before including this in a fight.
For my YouTube video on fighting with a cloak, click this link:
To use a cloak, grab it by the collar and give it an inside flip (coming up towards your face) and let it wrap around your wrist once. You want the fabric to fall away outside of your arm rather than inside so as to reduce snagging the incoming attacks. The cloak can then move back and forth in front of the body, hiding the rapier or dagger from your opponent’s view until you are ready to strike. The cloak can also be used to make a distracting attack, to bat a sword out of the way, or to parry incoming thrusts. It strains credibility to use it as a block for an aggressive cut, unless the cloak moves with the cut as the body evades the danger.
• Chains, Flails, Flail-Maces – all are dangerous, and have a nasty habit of reaching around blocks and lashing at defenders’ faces, or bouncing back from blocks and striking the attacker. Leave this to the professionals.
• Food – Only three concerns to worry about – cost, slipping, and cleanup. Cover those issues and bringing in food to a comedic fight can be delightful. For safety, the actors will have to have strict protocols in place so that they can move the fight to a new location on the set if something slippery hits the floor in the middle of the fight.
Rubber knives, floppy knives, rubber clubs, foam props.
The impulse to use rubber props as a safety measure is very tempting, but ultimately self-defeating. For if the rubber is flexible enough to bend should it strike someone, it will wobble as it’s being handled and looks phony. If the rubber is made stiff enough to approach realism, then you have something that’s going to hurt just as much as a wooden or steel prop. And actors don’t take the prop seriously enough if they think that it is “safe”. One should never expect any prop make up for imperfect training.
Styrofoam dressed to look like wood also hurts and can actually cause considerable damage, so under no circumstance should anyone’s head be struck with any “soft prop”. Minor cerebral contusions can occur from seemingly insignificant hits, and even slight bleeding in the brain can cause long-term brain damage.
Breakaway glass and other breakaway objects
Breakaway bottles, glasses and windowpanes are very well made these days and when used carefully are relatively safe for actors to use. Just keep a few things in mind. First, they are fragile, and you can expect to lose a few simply from shipping and general handling backstage. So you’d better budget and order twice whatever you had planned. Second, the bottoms of the bottles and glasses are thicker than the sides, so care must be taken not to strike someone with that firmer edge. Those bottoms will also often survive the first impact and even the second of hitting the floor, so can easily bounce away in a big chunk after the strike. Third, the pieces of broken “glass” can be quite sharp, so falling on the shards or grabbing them by hand could cut the skin. And most importantly, never swing the bottle towards someone’s face. If you absolutely must break a bottle over someone’s head, have the victim face turned away from the bottle.
The same considerations must be made for other breakaways, but at least actors don’t automatically believe that they are safe, so they treat them with more respect. Break away table and chairs can be rigged by most competent properties designers, so the most important warning is for the director. Always make sure that you have the swing going either down to the ground from overhead or swinging from down to upstage. The last thing you need is to have a broken chair leg flying out into the audience.
Knife throwing
Believe it or not, this is one of the easiest bits to perform. It is featured in the new version of Annie Get Your Gun, becomes a dramatic high point in Tom Sawyer, and I’ve had Kate do it in Taming of the Shrew, and Aramis take out a guard this way in The Three Musketeers.
The illusion itself is older than vaudeville. The knife is prominently held by the blade using the downstage arm. Go ahead and make a big deal about drawing the arm back and above the head. The throw should be done with great brio, the arm swinging all the way down and around to the upstage side of the body, with the eyes focusing fiercely on the intended target. The knife is quickly and invisibly passed to the upstage hand, which then drops it into a pocket when convenient. In one continuous motion the throwing hand comes back around to downstage so the audience can believe that the blade has been thrown. The second half of the bit requires a dummy knife already imbedded in a book or other prop or actor, hidden from view until the moment of the throw. As the actor lifts the embedded knife prop, he can also thump it with his finger, making the little contact sound that completes the illusion.
In multiple knife throwing, such as in Annie Get Your Gun, the real knife is not transferred to the upstage hand. Instead, that hand is already holding a half dozen or more knives (by the handles, not the blades) as a distraction. The thrower takes one knife, pretends to throw but this time allows the knife to pivot until the handle is resting against the forearm, hidden from audience view. He immediately pretends to pull out another knife from his collection, but it is of course the same knife that he swings back around, ready to “throw” again. The other side of this bit is an elaborately decorated target, made even more effective by having someone stand in the center of it. The face of the target is fabric, and the back of it has all of the dummy knives mounted on simple wood slats, and those slats fitted onto a small railing. An unseen assistant simply pushes the knives through the pre-cut fabric on the verbal cue [a grunt works fine] at each “throw”. That’s why the face of the target has to be highly decorated – to disguise the slits in the fabric.
An elaboration of the same is to have balloons mounted as targets on the target wall. In this illusion, the dummy knife handles will have very sharp pins affixed to the ends. As the dummy knives are pushed out they pop the balloons. So simple, so convincing.